bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) (01/14/89)
In article <6590084@hplsla.HP.COM> jima@hplsla.HP.COM (Jim Adcock) writes: >> Excuse me, >I think a lot of people have been saying that a c++ compiler >is a lot more difficult beast than a c compiler, but I'm not >sure that's true. I approached writing a C++ compiler with the idea that it was just a few simple extensions to C, and that it would take about 3 months. Boy, was I wrong! If it was so easy, there'd be a lot of competition out there. There are lots of C compilers for MS-DOS (probably > 20), but 1 C++ translator (a port of AT&T's), and one C++ compiler (Zortech's). There would be a Borland C++, a Microsoft C++, a Watcom C++, etc. Doing a C++ is about the same level of difficulty as writing a global flow analysis optimizer. I've been observing the industry for many years, and adding a real optimizer to an existing debugged compiler takes about 1 year (regardless of the number of people working on it!). I would estimate that it will take a company one year to add C++ to an existing C compiler. Add time to this if managers put more than two people working on it.